#making paper

New ADHD hobby just dropped LOL. Thankfully making paper is cheap and it’s a good way to upcycle all the spam mail, toilet paper and paper towel tubes, old grocery lists, and more.

Papermaking : An Ancient Activity by Natalie M. Rosinsky ; illustrated by Carol Sanchioni

☆ i made plantable paper using seeds i gathered myself. my last video on handmade paper, which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGAvv... was well recieved. but i would like to undescore the fact that i am not a professional handmade paper maker and this video is a craft vlog tutorial.

as this is a vlog - this is my ever first time making plantable handmade paper, so I've included the tiny hiccups along the process so you can learn from my mistakes too! here is a summary of important notes to take note of:

1/ NUMBER OF SEEDS. Each card has about 10-15 seeds. I spread them out two ways. The first, and shown on the video, in bigger groups or clumps. In a second batch of cards, I spread them out around the sheet in groups of 2s and 3s. You can manually put them on each sheet as i did on the video. But I suggest if you have more seeds to spread around or are making these is smaller batches you can directly mix it in the pulp solution.

2/ SIZING. Paper internal sizing, and most hand papermakers use a chemical called 'alkyl ketene dimer', which protects and coats each fiber. This essentially makes your paper writable. I'm not sure if this will affect the seeds in any way, but as you will see in the video, I did not use such chemical and I was able to write on and stamp on ink on the sheet with zero bleeding. This can be also attributed to the fact that the paper I used to make the pulp already has has sizing.

3/ MOULD & DECKLE. I had the mould and deckle custom made this time to the size that I want. It is a wooden frame. Unlike my first video where I used an improvised one, a silk screen, this custom made one I use in the video uses a metal mesh. And the metal mesh lifts much easier compared to the silk screen one.

4/ THICKNESS OF SHEET. As I mentioned, my intention behind making this paper is turn them into tags. In order to adjust thickness of the sheet I've found that adding more water in the basin helps. Just to let you know, thinner paper sheets are more prone to tears or gaps.

5/ TECHNICAL REFERENCES. If you are after exact instructions, here are the references that I found most useful:

https://www.naturesseed.com/blog/how-...

https://climatekids.nasa.gov/seed-paper/

https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/fact...

6/ WILL THE SEEDS GROW? I've read online that seeds have an 80% chance of germinating depending on environmental conditions. When these conditions are met, once plant the seeds have a pretty good chance of growing.

time stamps: handmade plantable paper tutorial 1:30 diy tag tutorial 11:42

hope you enjoy watching this video!

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TAG A FRIEND, who might want to make one of these too!

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MADE one already? Tag me, so I can share it on my stories so others can see you work.

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Thanks for being here!